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The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.

William James

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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Unknown
Cause
Causes
Word
Altar
Altars

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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
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Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it
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All natural goods perish. Riches take wings fame is a breath love is a cheat youth and health and pleasure vanish.
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
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The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
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To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
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Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.
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Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
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When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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